The bad news first: there are just 47 cars to be found on the entry list for the Nürburgring 24 Hours Qualifying Race this coming weekend. If you go back to last year’s Blancpain Endurance Series, we had 48 entries on the GP Track and now there are 47 on the Nordschleife.
Nevertheless, the field is full of high class drivers and the teams will be pushing to win the six-hour race taking place on Sunday. Almost a third of the field, 15 to be exact, will be made up of GT3 cars and all the big teams, apart from maybe Phoenix Racing and Manthey Racing, will be present.
BMW Motorsports sends out all four of its works-supported Z4 GT3s and apart from Jörg Müller, who is on Super GT duty, and Martin Tomczyk, all Nürburgring 24 Hours drivers will be taking their seat in the Z4s of BMW Sports Trophy Team Schubert and BMW Sports Trophy Team Marc VDS. If they have a clean race, any of the four line-ups of Claudia Hürtgen/ Dominik Baumann/ Jens Klingmann, Dirk Werner/ Dirk Müller/ Lucas Luhr/ Alexander Sims, Maxime Martin/ Uwe Alzen/ Marco Wittmann or Bas Leinders/ Markus Palttala/ Nicky Catsburg/ Dirk Adorf have a definite chance of taking home the overall victory. In addition, BMW Motorsport will field a M235i Racing car, where new BMW junior scheme driver Alexander Mies leads the line-up, together with Alexander Hofmann and Jethro Bovingdon.
Strong competition for the race win can be expected from the Audi R8 LMS ultra fleet. Prosperia C.Abt Racing will field R8s on Hankook tires, with Christopher Mies/ Christer Jöns/ Nicki Thiim and Peter Terting/ Marco Seefried/ Dominik Schwager sharing the driving duties. G-Drive Racing, fielded by Team WRT, will be present with an R8 for Roman Rusinov, Stéphane Ortelli, Edward Sandström and Nico Müller. Two additional R8s come from Audi Race Experience. In the one car we have Rahel Frey, Christian Frankenhout, Dominique Bastien and Christian Bollrath, and in the other space jumper Felix Baumgartner will make his race debut on the Green Hell sharing an R8 with Pierre Kaffer, Frank Biela and Marco Werner.
There are only two Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3s on the entry list, but both have top-flight driver line-ups. Black Falcon will field a single SLS with the #1 decal on the hood and doors for Abdulaziz Al Faisal, Stephan Rösler, Christian Menzel and Jeroen Bleekemolen. At Rowe Racing, a star-studded quartet of Thomas Jäger, Klaus Graf, Richard Göransson and Maro Engel will share the steering wheel.
There are a total of 13 Porsches on the entry, but only two of them are 911 GT3 Rs; the rest being a mix of 911 Carreras, 911 GT3 Cup and Caymans. Haribo Racing Team will field two cars – their GT3 R and a GT3 Cup – with both having the same driver line-ups of Richard Westbrook, Norbert Siedler, Mike Stursberg and Hans Guido Riegel. The other GT3 R comes from Falken Motorsport with Alexandre Imperatori, Peter Dumbreck and Wolf Henzler.
A single Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3 by Schulze Motorsport rounds out the GT3 entry, with brothers Tobias and Michael Schulze sharing the wheel with Kazunori Yamauchi and Jordan Tresson.
Besides the SP9/ GT3 class, there are many other intriguing stories. ROTEK Racing will field two Audis: an RS4 for Robb Holland and William Benson Caswell, and the Thunderhill 25 Hours winning TT-RS for Rob Huff, Kevin Gleason and Richard Meins. Americans George Richardson, Charlie Putman, Shelby Blackstock and Charles Espenlaub will be behind the wheel of two identical Porsche Caymans fielded by ProSport Performance. Team Jota is present with a Mazda MX5.
Apart from the joy of an overall victory, there are also 10 places in the Ring 24 Top 30 Qualifying on the line. These places will be awarded to the top 10 in qualifying for this weekend’s race.
Entry – here
Sören Herweg
